Lonza CytoSMART™ Lab Free-Trial Initiative Launched

Any laboratory wanting to experience Lonza’s CytoSMART™ System can now apply to become a Lonza CytoSMART™ Lab. In this exciting new initiative, Lonza is offering a four-week free trial of the easy-to-use CytoSMART™ System that allows researchers to remotely perform live cell monitoring and record time-lapse videos of their cell cultures. Scientists can view their cells without having to open the incubator door – or even visit the lab. Lonza will also feature the chosen laboratory’s CytoSMART™ Project prominently on the company’s website enabling scientists to share their latest research with their peers.

The CytoSMART™ System can be set up in minutes and is small enough to easily fit inside most incubators. Using it, researchers can reduce their reliance on core facilities, which can often be busy and expensive. The images taken with the CytoSMART™ Device are automatically transmitted into the cloud, enabling researchers to view their cell culture outside of the laboratory at any time through a web browser, whether via a computer, tablet or smartphone.

Advanced functions of the CytoSMART™ System include reporting ongoing cell confluency via a graphical readout and generating automatic email alerts to inform the user when milestones are reached. In addition to confluence studies, the CytoSMART™ System is well suited for scratch assays and for cells grown under hypoxic conditions as they don’t need to be removed from the incubator for assessment.

The first laboratory to use the CytoSMART™ System in this brand-new initiative is the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, part of the Medical Faculty at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Researcher Trutz-Eckhardt Fischer concludes, “The CytoSMART™ System completely fulfills our needs and is an adequate option for all cell-tracking tasks where a high resolution or fluorescence is not required. The big advantage in comparison to “traditional” live cell imaging systems certainly is the small size and the possibility to use the device in your already existing incubator, with no need for further investments.”